Renegade Bride (29 page)

"Emile?"

"Their father." Creed sighed deeply. "He was a trapper, and, years before, had been my father's partner."

"They hated each other?"

Creed nodded. "Most of the hatred was on Emile's part. My father only felt sorry for him."

She was quiet, waiting for him to go on.

"Years ago, while they were still partners, Emile took a Sioux wife named Otter Woman. She bore him two half-breed sons, Pierre and Étienne. Emile was a good trapper, and when he was sober, a good father to his boys. But he was a hard man and when he drank, he would beat Otter. She stayed with him because she couldn't bear to leave her boys and she knew he'd never let them go.

"As they grew older, the boys would go off trapping for weeks at a time with Emile... leaving Otter alone, often without food to see her through."

Creed-gritted his teeth and Mariah felt him tense beneath her. "My father watched over her. They were friends. Not lovers." He flashed an angry look at Mariah that made her recoil slightly until she realized the anger was part of the memory.

At last, he looked at the ceiling again with faraway eyes, remembering. "My father had a wife—my mother—back in Missouri, whom he was devoted to. But when Emile drank, he accused Antoine and Otter of betraying him behind his back. He would beat Otter and, when my father interfered, traded blows with him, too.

"Their partnership was finished long before it ended, but my father stayed for Otter's sake. When she decided to leave Emile, he helped her. Emile had the two boys with him on a trapping run. When he returned home to find her gone..."—Creed's fingers tightened on the back of Mariah's neck—"he went mad. Chased them across the countryside, swore he'd kill my father for running off with her."

Mariah raised her head from his shoulder to see the pain in his expression. "What happened?"

"He never got her back—her Sioux family made sure of that. My father became the object of Emile's hatred and over the years, he passed that venom on to his sons. They grew up believing my father was responsible for Otter's leaving."

Son of a wife-stealer. You are harder to kill than I thought.
LaRousse's words came back to her in a rush. It was all starting to make some kind of horrible, twisted sense.

"In the intervening years," Creed went on, "my father brought us here to live from Missouri. My mother, Solange,"—his voice deepened conspicuously on the word—"came from a wealthy family. They were against her coming. Even my father was against it."

"Why?"

He nodded his head toward the storm outside. "Look around you. Winters are hard.
Life
here is hard and it kills most everything that's beautiful, except the mountains." His gaze drifted vacantly to the ceiling again. "But my mother wanted to come. She was in love with my father and he with her. The time apart—the trapping seasons—had become too difficult. So at last, she convinced him.

"She lived and died here two years later of mountain fever. My father always blamed himself for bringing her. And, for many years, so did I."

"But... they loved each other," she argued with the logic of a woman who had only tonight begun to understand what that could mean.

"Yes, they did. But it wasn't enough to save her, was it?"

She fell silent, absently stroking the silken hair on his chest.

He raked a shaky hand through his damp hair. "At any rate, after she died we went into trading, with the Blackfeet and the Shoshone, and, sometimes, the Northern Cheyenne down along the Bighorn and Yellowstone. That's where... they found us that day—Pierre and his brother."

She traced her finger along the furious pulse at the base of his throat, waiting.

His eyes slammed shut. She could feel a tremor move up through his body like a small earthquake, but guessed it was the combined pounding of their hearts. He drew her head down flush with his shoulder so she wouldn't see his face and tightened his arms around her in a gesture that made her heart ache for him. "You don't have to tell me—"

"No," he whispered. "I want you to know who I am.
Why
I am."

She nodded against his chest.

"Until that day, I had never seen the two of them, only heard my father speak of them with remembered fondness. Emile had died several years before in a knife fight and we'd heard bad stories about the brothers, but my father didn't lend them much credence. Pierre and Étienne grew up around him. He loved them as if they were his own, because they were Otter's.

"So when they confronted us there along the river, my father welcomed them into our camp. It was his last mistake."

Mariah tightened a hand over his clenched fist. His chest heaved as if he'd been running and his eyes shone with an abiding hatred she'd seen there only twice before.

"There were others with them," he went on. "Pierre turned a gun on us and another one threw a rope over a cottonwood branch. My father didn't believe at first what they intended to do. He talked with them as he would have to me. But it only seemed to infuriate Pierre." Creed looked down at their intertwined hands.

"I tried to fight, but there were too many. They tied our hands and put us on our horses. Finally, my father pleaded with them, not for himself, but..." his voice choked, "for me."

Mariah's stomach twisted as she listened to the unbearable memory he'd kept locked away for so long.

"Pierre obliged him by letting me watch my father go first. I'll never forget the look he sent me before they kicked the horse out from under him." Moisture gathered behind his closed eyelids and he squeezed them tighter. "'I never thought it would come to this, boy', he said. 'I never thought—'"

Creed shoved himself up to a sitting position, leaving her alone on the stiff-haired buffalo fur. His chest heaved as if he couldn't quite catch his breath. Mariah lay silent, not even touching him. She had the sense he wasn't there with her anymore, but reliving it again, with all the pain that came with it.

The firelight flickered across his profile, deepening the darkness in his face. His voice was almost fragile, as if it might splinter into a thousand pieces if he went on.

"He didn't... die right away," Creed continued almost in a whisper. "They made sure of that by the way they tied his knot. I saw him choke..." He dropped his head into his hands. "The... look in his... eyes—it seemed like forever before... before he stopped... moving. And then he... he was dead. Just like that. A lifetime gone, snuffed. And those... those bastards were grinning.
Laughing.
I had never wanted to live more than I did at that moment. I wanted to... kill them with my bare hands. To rip them apart piece by piece for what they'd done. But—" His hand went automatically to his throat as if he could feel the rope there still and he stared at the crackling fire.

"The next thing I knew, they were whooping and riding their horses around mine until my pony bolted. I saw them ride off laughing even as the rope... cinched around my... my neck." He was breathing furiously. "I was of little consequence to them. Just a loose end. I understood that as I felt myself kicking for the ground that wasn't there... felt the life ebbing out of me.

"I don't know how long it took for everything to go black, disappear. Seconds, minutes. Then—" His brows dropped, remembering. "Then, I was somewhere else. I was outside of myself. I saw—"

He stopped short, the strange look gone from his eyes, and he turned to her with a blank expression.

"What?" She sat up beside him, wrapping her arms around him as if she could protect him from the pain. "What did you see?"

"Nothing." He stood. His body was perfection in the firelight, his face was still as carved marble.

"Something," she prodded.

His fists tightened and he turned to her. "I didn't mean to—you'll think I'm crazy."

"Don't tell me what I'll think."

"It
is
crazy." He walked to the fire and shoved another log in, sending up a cascade of sparks. For a long moment he watched it. At last, he turned back to her. "It... it changed me."

"Changed you... how?"

"You've seen me. You know what I am."

She'd never seen him so vulnerable. She searched for the right words, praying she wouldn't abuse the trust glimmering in his eyes. "I've seen that you're a good man. A kind man."

He laughed harshly. "I'm a killer."

"No. That's not what you are. I thought so, at first. But I was wrong."

His body relaxed a fraction, as if he'd been waiting for a blow that hadn't come. "I am what I've become. And I'm not the same man I was... before."

"I didn't know you then. I only know what I see." She shook her head. "I only care for the man I know now. It doesn't matter what you were before—"

He turned to her, his eyes soft and pleading. He sat on the edge of the bed. "You asked... how I knew how to find this place in the snow."

She nodded slowly.

"And how I knew to come back to camp when LaRousse was there, though I didn't see him?"

She stared unblinkingly.

"And the first time I touched you and I felt... it was so strong it nearly knocked me over and I knew... I knew we'd end up right here where we are."

"Yes." It was all she could say, because she'd felt it that day, too, as she still did every time they touched.

"It's a legacy of that... that day. Something I never wanted, something I can't control. It just comes and... I know things. Things I shouldn't know. The first time it happened was about two weeks after my father's death. I thought I had lost my mind.

"I was in Virginia City and I shook hands with a farrier who had just finished shoeing my horse. When I touched him, an image flashed through my mind of his leg pinned beneath the wheel of a wagon. Of course, I said nothing to him, but three days later, it happened. A wagon rolled over him, pinning his leg. He lost it."

Mariah could see the pain it cost him to know such a thing. To know and not be able to stop it. "Go on."

"It's been like that ever since. I see things; sometimes it requires a touch, sometimes not. Sometimes it's only a feeling, not an image. Crazy, huh?"

Mariah sank back against the pillow, trying to absorb what he'd just told her. She understood now what he'd meant. If anyone else had said these things, no doubt she would have reacted with fear or disbelief. But it was Creed telling her, and she'd trusted him with her life. Nothing he could say would ever change that. She shook her head slowly. "No, I don't think you're crazy. Some might call it a gift."

"I never have," he said softly.

"Without it, Jesse and I would both be dead."

His gaze dropped to his hands. "I know."

"What happened to you, Creed, that day?"

He fingered the curly hide beneath his hand. "I've never talked about it. I'm not sure I can tell you. I'm not sure I believe it myself." She watched him in silence.

"I was dying, I could feel... my life... leaving me. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, though it felt longer. Much longer." A tremor went through him, though he didn't seem to notice it. His knuckles went white around the buffalo fur. "I saw myself kicking, dying, as if... as if it was someone else. I remember a moment of pity for the one who was dying. I wasn't afraid. There was only this light. I... heard my mother's voice, sensed her beside me. She spoke to me... something in French, but I've never been able to remember her words."

He swallowed hard and looked up at her. "Then I saw a man ride up and cut my... cut me down. I felt myself falling. When I opened my eyes, the man was leaning over me, shouting at me to breathe." He lifted his eyes to hers. "That man was Seth."

Mariah braced a trembling palm against the hide, her mind whirling. "Seth?
My
Seth?"

"Out, ma petite.
Your Seth. He was heading through there for Alder Gulch when he heard the shouting. He got to me just in time to see them ride off, leaving me swinging. He cut me down and ripped the rope from my throat. Forced me to breathe again."

No.

"He buried my father and stayed with me until I was strong enough to ride. Then he invited me to come along with him to the gulch. We've been friends ever since." Creed shrugged, staring at his hands. "He didn't even know me. He could have ridden away from that kind of trouble and left me to die. I was almost there." Creed looked up. "But he didn't." Creed took a halting breath. "I owe him my life. Ironic, isn't it? It's only because of him that I'm here with you now."

"Oh, God." Mariah's eyes slid shut in misery. Now she understood.

"Well put." Creed's fists flexed, searching for something to punch. "So here we are, the three of us. Whatever destiny brought me back, Seth is a part of it, has been since that first moment. And now... I've betrayed him." Creed pounded a fist into the hide, sending up a cloud of dust. "He saves my life and I've spoiled his woman."

A coldness icier than the air outside the cabin crept over her.
I'm not his woman anymore. Can't you see that, Creed? I'm yours. Always and forever.
She forced herself to face reality. He'd spoken no words of love. Nothing to make her think he wouldn't give her back to Seth when they got there. Nothing to bind them but what they had shared with each other tonight. But that, for her, was enough to last a lifetime. Her voice, when she spoke, was barely audible. "Spoiled?"